loss.

it would figure that one of my favorite patients would die of something completely unrelated to what we treated him for over the course of 3 months last summer.

that the sweet man who called to say thank you to his nurses on christmas would pass a few short months later.

he was one of the most genuine patients that i ever met. you couldn't help but love him, even when he was annoying your or grossing you out. he cared about me too, i could tell. not in the 'you hold the key to the narcotics' kind of way, but actually saw me as a person, not just a juice dispensing, blanket-fetching, pill passer.

we put him through months of hell to fix him: surgeries almost every other day, skin grafts, bedside dressing changes that were so painful to him that they left me in tears, refusing to do that EVER again. after the months of inpatient hell came the rehab...more months of relearning to walk. he would call with updates, or pop down to the floor to keep us posted on how he was doing.

he was living, breathing, walking proof that this thankless sad job actually means something once and awhile.

and then today, he wasn't. he died in his sleep from something probably totally unrelated to all of his other issues.

it's cruel, really.

and it hurts. like i can see why people walk away from nursing, hurts.

i invest myself in my patients, not because i'm flo nightingale, but because i can't help it. i care about what happens to them, especially the ones that i get to know over the course of weeks and months. i've never lost one of "mine" before. i don't like the way it feels.

i hope i made an impact on his life like he did on mine.